[Guest Post] Did You Eat Yet?
18 Million Rising’s Guide To Building A Newsletter As Community Care
Hi! Bianca and Laura here from 18 Million Rising. We’re excited to partner with Action Network to share this case study with you! In August 2019, we launched 18 Million Rising’s first-ever newsletter. Below we take you through our learnings and why we chose Action Network as the tool to support the process.
The Challenge
We are seeing corporate social media evolve into platforms better designed for purchasing than community organizing. Algorithms, shadowbanning, outright censorship, and content moderation already and will continue to undercut digital organizing efforts in the future. 18MR uses technology as a tool for organizing and is always adapting our tactics to respond to the changing online landscape.
Our Objective
A Solution
We decided to create a newsletter that would provide custom content to our members. A newsletter is a cost-effective tactic that leverages an existing tool (email) to build relationships away from social media platforms. As an incentive to our members, our newsletter includes content that can’t be found publicly elsewhere and is specifically curated for our base.
Our Goals
BUILD
our newsletter to become a valuable place to access Asian American leadership and analysis.
REACH
our audience that is not on social media or whose algorithms prevent them from seeing our content.
UTILIZE
untapped free digital space to promote thought leadership, provide analysis, and strengthen relationships within our community.
ENGAGE
with our members by maintaining a consistent 15–20% open rate in the first year. Our mid-term goal of 2–3 years is to maintain a consistent 25–35% open rate.
Process
Choosing A Platform
We use Action Network as a platform to build and maintain our newsletter. Action Network has a suite of features that supports our needs.
Drag and Drop Email Tool: Easy way for technical and non-technical staff to build a template. Creating a template with the drag and drop editor made it possible for anyone on staff to be able to prepare and send the email each month. Additionally, we were able to do AB Testing to see what formats performed best.
Subscription Page: Action Network’s form feature was a quick way to create a subscription page where our members could subscribe to the newsletter.
CRM management and security: By using Action Network we were able to build a separate segment alongside our typical segments to compare engagement month to month. Additionally, the Action Network toolset is a secure way to store members’ contact information.
Developing Our Design
As a digital-first organization, we know that visually forward content performs well. We designed our newsletters to emphasize eye-catching, visual, and interactive content in a mobile-first format. Using the drag and drop email editor we created a ready-made template to simplify the process of creating a newsletter each month. This has led to a strategic and streamlined newsletter publication process for 18MR that cuts down our staff time and makes it easy to plug in new or guest editors.
Centering Our Community
Each month we have a dedicated author, often a member of the staff or a guest editor from the community to write the newsletter which lends to the newsletter’s tone and voice. The newsletter not just a platform for 18MR announcements, but also an opportunity to host community voices, resources, and responses to current events and campaigns. Each month we choose a loose but relevant theme — healing, Thankstaking, abolition, etc — to base the newsletter content around.
Using Our Voice
No matter who is our guest editor, our newsletter is written in 18MR’s unique tone and voice. In our template, we include a brief guide for writers to refer to while they write. The tone is casual, a little vulnerable, personal, witty. We encourage editors to think of the email as a “thanks for checking in with us” instead of an authoritative report. We invite humor, we tell our writers “you can be a little cheeky.”
Our Results
Over the past year, we quadrupled the number of dedicated subscribers to the newsletter.
Action Network’s Deliverability Guide recommends maintaining at least a 15% open rate over a 24-hour rolling period. In our most active segment, we surpassed our initial goal and have a 44% open rate and 4.5% click rate. Overall we are seeing a 24% average open rate and 2.7% click rate.
Highlights
Curate an experience
Make each month special and different. Themes helped to keep the experience novel. Themes that did really well with our members included: connecting history to legacy, Thankstaking, healing, and COVID-19. These themes responded to current events, seasons, and issues important to our members. Additionally, members particularly enjoyed hearing from community voices. Newsletters from guest editors like illustrator Ashley Lukashevsky (April) and movement elder Harvey Dong (May) yielded direct replies of thank yous, appreciations, and reminiscences from members.
Use Attention-Grabbing Language
A few excerpts from past newsletters:
“These Asian American sex workers are organizing against pro-police rallies.”
“Add this book to your summer reading list.”
“And, here’s how to slow the fuck down.”
Lead with your most important link
The newsletter content with the highest engagement was consistently the first hyperlink and our campaigns and calls to action. As a result, we always place these at the beginning.
Cater to your most engaged segments
As expected, our newsletter subscriber segment and our most active segments perform the best with open, click, and action rates.
We noticed our least active segments had very low engagement rates but were interested in learning about campaign updates. So, we focus on campaigns at the top of the newsletter knowing there will be drop off afterward.
Insights
Bypass Algorithmic Curation
Email provides an opportunity for direct to member communication. Use this space to prioritize important messaging members are about: campaign feedback, announcements, response to current events, and pop culture happenings.
Build Intimacy
Our “Did You Eat Yet?” newsletter replicates the informal intimacy of social media platforms but gives us more control over what they see and when. Include content that comes from your community, focus on things that make members feel seen and heard.
Consider All Real Estate
The newsletter is designed to grow cross-engagement across platforms. Connect folks to content across platforms, include links to the website, blog, actions and petitions, social media, and events.
Thanks, Action Network for inviting us to share a bit about our process! Want to learn more? Don’t forget to sign up for our Newsletter!
Want to download this case study as a PDF? Click here.
